What makes a good relic storyline / step

[CNitsah]

Heavensward

> Animated relics step has two possibilities :
- either you give a Zeta Zodiac weapon to get the 2 crystal needed to complete the stage,
- either you collect 6 elemental cristal that can be gained in FATES from the different HW zones. You used to need 3 crystals of each element, now it’s only one of each. I don’t know if the drop rate has changed since HW, but the current drop rate, while not 100%, is still high enough so you can easily complete the step in under one hour.

> Awoken weapon asks you to make 10 dungeons from late ARR and HW. It’s simple enough, and unsynced makes it a walk in the park today.

> Anima steps is one of those “you have to collect some objects, but you have to exchange them with other objects, that you can either get with tomestone, either with tribe token, or with GC seals. I do see that step being a pain in ass at the time, but mostly long, not really difficult. So I guess it was ok. Nowadays, with the price of the object being what it is, it’s fairly easy.

> Hyperconductive anima : you need 5 items that can be obtained with a repeatable quest (that consist of doing the 3 CT raids or with tomestones (1800 of the non caped HW at the time). I feel like doing 15 CT raids was not the most enjoyable, but at the time, there were only 4 alliance raids, so I guess you could easily get them. Today, it’s far more easy, one of the items costs 350 poetics.

> Reconditioned Anima. You have to exchange two definite items to augment by 3 (1 in the past) the substats of your weapon. At least there are a lot of ways of getting the 2 items, being crafter / gatherer token, exchanging crafted items or items you got from some ARR extremes

> Sharpened Anima. You need to get 50 items. At the time each of them cost 80 non caped tomestones. You could also get 18 of them by doing a weekly quest (3 leveling roulette) or a daily (1 expert roulette at the time, now a 50/60/70/80). Today they cost 40 poetics. Overall a balanced step.

> Complete Anima is divided in 2 part. one is creating an object that’s not so hard, but the other is getting 2000 points of light. I found post that said that in early stormblood, that was between 120 and 130 A1S. Which, if we take they kept the same categories as explained here https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w..._Weapons/Quest, means we got half the light we get today at the time. for someone that didn’t do savage, that means 120 dungeons or 60 HW alliance raid. If you want my opinion, that’s stupidly long. I’d take the 1500 memo over that anytime. Today the change in light given and the unsynced makes it a really fun step, but at the time, I wonder what was the reaction.

> Anima Lux is doing the 12 AAR and HW primal trials. then buy an object with tomestone. Once again, it can be unsynced, and It’s 12 different trials, so it’s a good step.


Overall, I think the complete anima step was fucking dumb at the time. needing to farm 63 dungeons (that’s if they needed the same light as today, which seems to not be the case) is not good game design. Especially since those steps were supposed to last for a little less than 2 month, compared to the 4 month now

I still wonder about Hyperconductive and Reconditioned steps at the time. Not a fan of repeating the same content again and again (CT for Hyper even if they didn’t go overboard with that), and not sure about how boring it was for Reconditioned. It seems to me it was also a step that asked you a lot of braindead farm, but what do I know? On the other hand, the steps that ask you to do some precise dungeons/trials are very good and aged well. Talking about aging, the changes done with all the steps makes them really enjoyable to do today. Even the Complete Anima step is a pleasure to do today. PF are still pretty common, and each of those was a good experience for me.

But the sole existence of that step made me wonder what was the playerbase like at the time? Were a bigger part of them into extremes/savages? Or were the relics a content made for the hardcore player at the time. And if it was, what about the midcore players? The lack of proper midcore content is one of the things I find problematic with the current game, so was that always there?

One last thing, the whole thing has its own story, that recontextualizes why you need to redo those. It helps keep the player involved with the story.